Dreams In Which I'm Dying
by Shannonlass1
Summary: DonnieGretchen - Even in an alternate universe she feels his love.


The woman formerly known as Charlotte Costello sipped the warm mug of apple cider that rested in her palm. Her legs were crossed as she rested on the hood of her red Volvo. The sky was the distinct shade of blue-gray that comes in the early morning light, and the air was fresh and pure. It was on these types of mornings that Charlotte became pensive and silent, as she looked over her childhood Virginia – the place in which she came of age. It was a quixotic thought, wasn't it? "Coming of age". Many people had fallen in love with a term like that, romancing it into an amazing type of drama and tragedy, hyping it up to become a cathartic hyperbole. She'd done the same. She was full of angst, too. It was the way to be, the only way that made sense as an adolescent. Luckily she wasn't an adolescent anymore. At the age of twenty-one, Charlotte had come of age, and was ready for some banality.  
  
A long time ago she was Charlotte Costello. But somewhere on the road to adulthood, when her family fell apart, when her dad stabbed her mom in the chest...she was transported to the green mountains and raw beauty of Virginia, and given the name 'Gretchen Ross' as the cherry on top. She'd used that name ever since, and after all these years, still found it odd that one could switch names so quickly, and still retain the same persona. Names were meaningless. Simply trappings there for other peoples' convenience. Gretchen Ross didn't exist, just as Charlotte Costello hadn't existed after she'd discarded it. Some she distinctly felt as if she didn't exist either. If her name and her past didn't exist, what was it that made her worth existing as well? She waited a long time for someone to come along and find it, but he never did. At least, she thought he didn't. Maybe she missed it somewhere along the line...  
  
The vibration of her cell phone came in her pocket, and broke through her contemplative state. She set the mug down on the hood, stood up, and sifted through the warmth of her jacket.  
  
"Gretch."  
  
Jay, her on-and-off boyfriend of a year.  
  
"Hey."  
  
They talked. That is all one needs to know. Charlotte lost interest in the conversation. It was futile. Life was futile. She wasn't even interested enough in what they were saying to recount it in any way shape or form. For all she knew, they were just words. Something about how he would see her at Chris's party in two weeks. About how he had a surprise for her. That meant he was going to go buy her something tonight and give it to her at the party. Probably a CD. Maybe he would be original enough to mix his own. Then again, if it were original, she wouldn't have thought of it. Whatever it was, she'd be sure to squeal really loud and pretend like she was surprised by it.  
  
After she hung up, the sun had risen, yellow and shiny, and making the colors of the mountains every shade of purple, blue, and green. It was beautiful, and suddenly Charlotte felt very nostalgic, even though she didn't know why. It was some sort of inexplicable sadness that tugged at her solar plexus, and she relished in the sudden melancholy.  
  
She'd felt it before. On her little trip back to Middlesex, Virginia from Wisconsin, to visit her step dad, she'd felt the tug as she passed by several houses in her neighborhood. One of them was the Darkos. She'd heard from a friend that daughter Elizabeth Darko had recently gotten married. She and her husband were living in Orlando, and happy. Charlotte had never known the family that well. Their son had died many years ago, before Charlotte had gone to college – in her senior year, actually. Donnie Darko. He was in her class.  
  
Charlotte shrugged off the feeling. If she wasn't cynical, then who was she?  
  
00000000  
  
That night, Charlotte stayed in her old room, while her step dad went out with some friends. That meant that he would get drunk and come home later, smelling up the house with beer. What surprised her about her bedroom was that it still had all of her old teddy bears, posters of David Bowie, and awards in it. It even had her old computer on her desk. Her step dad hadn't touched anything. There was a thin layer of dust coated on her desk.  
  
Before she nodded off to sleep, she restlessly reminded herself that this time her dreams would be completely silent and peaceful. Perhaps the change in setting would upset her body into having a clean, serene sleep. She knew it was just a hope, though. She drank half a glass of warm milk and added extra blankets to her bed. Maybe tonight her date with destiny wouldn't happen. But there was no escaping her subconscious, and part of her truly didn't want to...  
  
This time it was different – this time in her dreams, she could feel the heft and outline of his body, his muscles. His smooth skin that teased and tempted her. She'd wanted to resist, but the goose bumps appeared as spiky pinpricks on her pale skin. She needed him, and he knew that. He wore a white shirt, which was one of those random, meaningless things she would remember later, because it contrasted with the tan of his skin. The dark, tousled hair, hid under his hood was also new, and it scared her. Feeling him make love to her as a shadow, a nothing, an amorphous being was comforting. In that way being with him felt more like a dream. Knowing that there were features of reality on him: skin, hair, muscles...that's when she began to be afraid. It made her irrational side wonder if maybe there was something real about his boyishness and timidity laced with angst-ridden desire that she had known.  
  
She felt, rather than saw, him approach her. Some uncertain kind of heat permeated the vicinity, and everything was hazy in her surrealistic sight. The first she felt of him were his arms that enfolded her, then his hands that pushed her hair out of her face. Then his lips, which nuzzled her neck, and then lower. And she would've blushed, had it not been so right.  
  
He pressed her down onto the seat in the car she was suddenly aware they were in – gently, but knowingly, and unashamed, too. And when she felt him, it was like dying and being born at the very same time, and she was distinctly aware that this was the definitive moment of her life. That she would remember this, and want to relive it over and over again. The sweat and sexual heat awakened in her, and her hair stuck to her. He moved in her like he loved her. His moans beckoned her to some place far away that she would drown in undeniably...  
  
It always ended the same. It would fade sooner rather than later...she would turn, just barely coming out of her blissful state... and he would be gone...  
  
The disappointment hurt more each time, cutting her a little more to the quick. He would be the death of her.  
  
...she would wake up in her own, real bed in a mass of hot, sweaty sheets and flushed cheeks, upset that it was all in her head. It happened first the year after she graduated high school. Then again in sophomore year. Now, her junior year of college blossomed with the continuity of such an event. It happened about every two weeks, and it was always slightly different each time. First, it was a foreign bedroom, and the answering machine was on... Then it was a random, abandoned cellar. The next time it was on the green grass of park, at night, with a stash of bicycles on the curb. And it happened that night in her old house, and in the dream they were in his car.  
  
Who was he? This mystery man that invaded her dreams and permeated her thoughts, making her wild with ecstasy and then abject with sorrow. Did he exist solely in her thoughts? Did she know him? Perhaps he existed in another time, another world...and why did he continue to haunt her? Every time, a little more of the puzzle would be revealed. His hair, what his fingers looked like, his height. But one thing never changed about these nights of bizarre magic: as his shadow retreated into the recesses of her imagination, her only regret was that she never did get to see his face.  
  
00000000  
  
A/N: Thanks for reading! Angsty, eh? Here's my disclaimer: Donnie Darko, Gretchen Ross, Elizabeth Darko, the stepdad, the whole idea and movie all belongs to Richard Kelly, Pandora and Newmarket. Thanks for letting me borrow them!  
  
Also, the name "Charlotte Costello" was borrowed from a great D/G fanfiction on this site, actually, called "Mad World", by Sabriel Cosette Diamanta. 


End file.
